***Russian - Ukraine War Tactical and Strategic Updates*** [Warning on OP]

8,032,260 Views | 48616 Replies | Last: 11 hrs ago by lb3
aggiehawg
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AG
Quote:

So….dinner will be late, then?
Okay I laughed. Putin's Chef won't be serving hot dogs tonight.
YouBet
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AG
shiftyandquick said:

It's unlike Prigozhin to be radio-silent. Would not surprise me if he is dead.


Sounds like everyone at the top on both sides is silent today.
PJYoung
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AG
Who?mikejones!
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I find it hard to believe he didn't anticipate putin making threats to his family
Sq 17
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I guess prig was betting Putin fell out of a window prior to all the Wagner associates falling out of windows

In hindsight Putin being able to activate a black bag squad against Wagner Hierarchy and their family is the only explanation for Prig to take the deal
Who?mikejones!
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Yeah, I think he was thinking a larger uprising would be happen if he was the spark but the Russian people just shrugged, at least the ones who actually knew about it. I also am suspicious of the leaks saying entire Russian military units were joining wagner in their revolt.

I wouldn't be surprised if the alphabets got to prigozhin and played it up a bit.
Eliminatus
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Agthatbuilds said:

Yeah, I think he was thinking a larger uprising would be happen if he was the spark but the Russian people just shrugged, at least the ones who actually knew about it. I also am suspicious of the leaks saying entire Russian military units were joining wagner in their revolt.

I wouldn't be surprised if the alphabets got to prigozhin and played it up a bit.
I have no evidence that says one thing over another but I appreciate the simplest explanations like yours more and more as I get older and figure those are more likely than anything else. Or at least just as likely, Complex byzantine plots definitely happen but my own uninformed thoughts say it was probably him losing his nerve.

If this whole thing truly was organic and spontaneous, I would imagine the enormity of what he was actually doing was really starting to sink in. He had a very narrow window of which to cause a fuss but once Moscow started digging in and there were not massive columns of open AFR units flocking to him, I think his chances of success evaporated and I am sure he realized that. Take your good winnings and go home and not throw it all on red and lose it all. Ultimately, I think he just got scared and chose to live and take a deal while he could rather than fail and lose his life.
txags92
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My first thought when it came out that he capitulated, but wasn't being arrested or executed, was that they got to his family. Him giving up the coup in return for his family surviving was the only kind of bargain that made sense.
LMCane
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Up to 38 Air Crew and a Russian General killed by Wagner

not sure if posted previously this is British reporting on Mi-8 shot down plus a KA-52 and an IL-22 perhaps with a General on board.

good thing the coup was "bloodless"
LMCane
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Eliminatus said:

jabberwalkie09 said:

AgLA06 said:

jabberwalkie09 said:

AgLA06 said:

RogerEnright said:



Key point that I haven't seen mentioned: Wagner likely won't fight in Ukraine again.

I am not sure I agree, but I was surprised by the significance of that statement. It would represent a good number of Russia's best trained troops out of the picture, or even more, Russia may have to account for what they are doing.
If that's truly the case it also means any other PMC and the Chechens have to be done as well. No different and the same threat.
I'm not sure I agree. I haven't watched he video but if the RU MoD makes them sign contracts with them and become part of the RU MoD forces, would they not become assets of the the RU military?
They're not going to willingly join the conventional crap fighting force and be used as fodder. It would be like (extreme example only because they were actually competent) telling the Ranger Regiment to disperse into national guard units. The vast majority would walk away and do something else.

Any of them with a brain knows the first chance given, they're going to be done away with however possible no different than Uriah.
You're assuming they have a choice in the matter. I don't think they have much of a choice here. Similar to how people who protested towards the beginning of all this suddenly found themselves with mobilization orders after having been thrown into the back of a paddy wagon.

I do agree that any sane person given the choice would walk away though.


Look at it from the AFR side. Wagner shot down at least seven aircraft killing at least 10+ airmen. Military branches are like cults. The Russian Air Force is not going to forget this. How Wagner killed some of their people and are likely going to get away with it with zero repercussions. There was already tension between regular army and Wagner as well. I highly doubt these ex mercs are going to greeted with open arms and smiles. And they sure as **** won't be trusted.
Great point- as I posted earlier the British intel is reporting up to 38 Russian aircrew were killed in the 6 choppers and that IL-22 is a large intel aircraft

I doubt the Russian Air Force will be all that gung ho in running CAS for any remaining Wagner units on the front lines.

I don't see how Wagner even continues as an independent force anymore.
LMCane
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Okay so just following your logic here-

Wagner just launched an assault on Russia and Moscow from their bases in Ukraine.

and you are stating you think Putin will rearm and refuel them and send them back into Ukraine.
LMCane
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wow this is the most intense video I have seen from the entire war.

everyone claims this is like World War I in the trenches, but in fact for the Uke infantry it is much more similar to fighting the Japanese in the jungles- where you cant' see anything at all and suddenly someone pops up right on top of you.


LMCane
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Whirligigs said:

JB!98 said:

DCPD158 said:

Now we will have thousands of Wagner troops north of Ukraine in Belarus. Not a good thing if they send them south in a new push to Kyiv.
Ok, now suspicious me kicks in again. Was this just a strategic repositioning of Wagner back into Belarus? Under the guise of a coup in Russia which would intent to get the Ukes to move more forces into the gap and leave the other part of the country lightly defended?

None of this makes sense to me.


It's either chaos and incompetence or a repositioning to open a second front. Time will tell.

It is baffling to me why so many Americans are conspiracy theorists regarding every single event that occurs on the entire planet.

which is more likely:

That the same Putin who declared a THREE DAY SPECIAL MILITARY OPERATION to take Kyiv now on day 486 decided to look weak and scared and literally be digging trenches outside Moscow to stop his own forces overthrowing him..

OR that a month ago he sat down with everyone and stated "hey guys, we need to shoot down 7 helicopters and one of our most valuable Intel aircraft and kill up to 30 Russian aircrew and have the world laughing at us, but in return we can then move some troops around!!"
Rossticus
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LMCane
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PJYoung said:


nothing says "this was all 5D chess by mastermind strategist Vladimir Putin to move troops around the front"

more than video of burning wreckage from his best attack helicopters and one of the few intel platforms of the Russian Air Force.
Rossticus
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benchmark
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AG
Wow if true. No reserves along the entire front? Or did they take the wrong exit returning from Rostov?

UK MoD Update
Quote:

There has been little evidence that Russia maintains any significant ground forces operational level reserves which could be used to reinforce against the multiple threats it is now facing in widely separated sectors, from Bakhmut to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, over 200km away.
Sq 17
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Agthatbuilds said:

Yeah, I think he was thinking a larger uprising would be happen if he was the spark but the Russian people just shrugged, at least the ones who actually knew about it. I also am suspicious of the leaks saying entire Russian military units were joining wagner in their revolt.

I wouldn't be surprised if the alphabets got to prigozhin and played it up a bit.


Conscripts defecting and joining the match to Moscow definitely happened but it appears what he needed was the Russian Alphabet Agencies to fall in line. Hard to estimate how many of those guys are in Moscow and scattered around Russia and abroad
It is likely a sizable number and those guys did not flip
JFABNRGR
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AG
LMCane said:

Okay so just following your logic here-

Wagner just launched an assault on Russia and Moscow from their bases in Ukraine.

and you are stating you think Putin will rearm and refuel them and send them back into Ukraine.


One of their services as a private firm is combat. They or at least part of them are a significant threat to Putin who is struggling to resource his invasion.

So yes I think he will renegotiate some of those contracts and keep them engaged in Ukraine where they might all get killed or help achieve some of Putins UKR objectives.

At the same time putin has likely quietly ordered his minions to kill Pgon and any of his loyal key leaders.
MouthBQ98
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AG
The Russians used to like Putin and his Russian nationalism but I imagine it is wearing thin. Still they probably view that any new boss is the same as the old boss as far as they are concerned so most of the existing power structure decided to not take a gamble and stick with the known quantity. Putin is old and unhealthy and so are all of his major supporters and political heirs. The Russians are content to wait him out it seems, much like Stalin.

As for Prigo, he took a shot at the king or appeared to, and missed, and he is doomed unless he remains useful and under direct control, and will disappear when he is not.
MouthBQ98
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Perun pointed this out in his last video: the attacks ARE likely going to plan. When the Ukrainians took everything up to Kherson in 2022, they first seemed to be launching costly fruitless probing attacks. What they were really doing was forcing Russia to use ammunition and fuel at a much higher rate than they could resupply after having damaged the Russian supply chain in that area.

They have been doing this exact same thing again. They targeted specific supply routes, forcing longer inefficient resupply routes, and they targeted ammo dumps and depots, all while engaged in a much higher rate of operations along a fairly broad front. Russia is being forced to use up more ammunition than it can currently resupply in the short term right now, and when a critical area of their front begins to run out, their forces will be logistically forced to surrender or retreat.

Ukraine has held back the bull of their forces looking for signs of this happening.
SmallBusiness
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MouthBQ98 said:

Perun pointed this out in his last video: the attacks ARE likely going to plan. When the Ukrainians took everything up to Kherson in 2022, they first seemed to be launching costly fruitless probing attacks. What they were really doing was forcing Russia to use ammunition and fuel at a much higher rate than they could resupply after having damaged the Russian supply chain in that area.

They have been doing this exact same thing again. They targeted specific supply routes, forcing longer inefficient resupply routes, and they targeted ammo dumps and depots, all while engaged in a much higher rate of operations along a fairly broad front. Russia is being forced to use up more ammunition than it can currently resupply in the short term right now, and when a critical area of their front begins to run out, their forces will be logistically forced to surrender or retreat.

Ukraine has held back the bull of their forces looking for signs of this happening.
Perun also stated that Ukraine is focusing more on targeting artillery (numbers show it).
JFABNRGR
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AG
benchmark said:

Wow if true. No reserves along the entire front? Or did they take the wrong exit returning from Rostov?

UK MoD Update
Quote:

There has been little evidence that Russia maintains any significant ground forces operational level reserves which could be used to reinforce against the multiple threats it is now facing in widely separated sectors, from Bakhmut to the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, over 200km away.

I suspect this is why they spent so much efforts using excavators to dig multiple trenches/tank traps while emplacing miles of the concrete barriers (aka dragons teeth). Mines Mines Mines. These will be the most effective at stopping, slowing down, and killing Ukrainians and UKR armor. Also if they had that many reserves they would have been on the offensive longer or at least taken Bakhmut.

The loitering drones and targeting drones are also a problem. As stated by others the best way to effectively stop the targeting drones is to get the orcs to run out of ammunition or wear out their barrels.

rgag12
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That's the glass half-full approach of looking at the Kherson campaign and this current one.

The glass-half empty approach would be to point out that the Russians were EXTREMELY constrained when it came to re-supply in the Kherson campaign as they were stuck on the right bank of a major river with only two-or three bridges to get supplies from, (Two I think were being targeted by Ukrainian missles so we're damaged). Nevertheless it still took Ukraine months to out-attrition the Russians in Ukrainian favorable conditions.

In this campaign, the Russians aren't stuck on the wrong side of a river bank. They have multiple ways of getting supplies, (major roads, railroad networks, ports) that Ukraine can target with any consistency. Ukraine will only be able to re-create the Kherson dilemma for Russia if it seizes Mauripol or Melitopol.
MouthBQ98
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AG
Russia is rail dependent. They have a limited truck fleet and poor development of truck based logistics. Ukraine only has a few rail lines they need to target to create very difficult logistics conditions south of the Dnipro river. There is basically one major rail line that goes through Tokmak, and everything else comes up through Crimea, or by road. The road options are insufficient due to insufficient trucking, so they really only need to get within reach of the rail line (they already are got some systems), and also interdict supply via Crimea, which they have, and then target logistics based in that region, and keep up the pressure. It will take some weeks for demand to exhaust supply throughput.

I didn't claim it would work, just that it has worked before and what they appear to be doing. Given Russia now has many more internal issues revealed, their logistics picture can only have become even that much more complicated.
erudite
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Video posted about Wagner units unhappy about the mutiny results. No clue as to authenticity.
SmallBusiness
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Former KGB spy just said, "Russian army went from second best in the world to second best army in Russia behind Wagner"... sort of evolution of the joke we all heard "second best army in Ukraine"
74OA
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AG
For those interested in the strategic implications of the Wagner rebellion.

ATLANTIC COUNCIL
Who?mikejones!
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If we look at some of the schemes to take out hilter as a guide...

None of them worked. One or two got close. They were complicated endeavors where any specific action of a plan going wrong pretty much made success impossible.

Specifically, many of those plans had backing of German leadership, but only if they were to be successful. Anything less and those same leaders would support hilter and end the revolt.

It might be the same here- prigozhin might have had the backing he needed, should his plan looked like it was going to work. US intelligence clearly caught wind of this a few weeks ago. I dont think he made this attempt on emotions alone.

I must assume prigozhin would not have attempted this unless he felt he had the backing of a significant number of Russian military leaders. When those leaders either didn't exist or didn't fulfill their end of the operation, prigozhin had no choice but to capitulate

There were cleary complex dynamics at play during the putsch. But, I think it failed for a simple reason- the support prigozhin thought he had either didn't exist or evaporated once it looked like he wouldn't necessarily be successful.
lb3
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Agthatbuilds said:

If we look at some of the schemes to take out hilter as a guide...

None of them worked. One or two got close. They were complicated endeavors where any specific action of a plan going wrong pretty much made success impossible.

Specifically, many of those plans had backing of German leadership, but only if they were to be successful. Anything less and those same leaders would support hilter and end the revolt.

It might be the same here- prigozhin might have had the backing he needed, should his plan looked like it was going to work. US intelligence clearly caught wind of this a few weeks ago. I dont think he made this attempt on emotions alone.

I must assume prigozhin would not have attempted this unless he felt he had the backing of a significant number of Russian military leaders. When those leaders either didn't exist or didn't fulfill their end of the operation, prigozhin had no choice but to capitulate

There were cleary complex dynamics at play during the putsch. But, I think it failed for a simple reason- the support prigozhin thought he had either didn't exist or evaporated once it looked like he wouldn't necessarily be successful.

I agree with this. The problem for Prigozhin is that he needed to achieve some real success before any commanders would publicly choose a side.

That several units allowed Wagner to pass unchallenged (and a couple even joined with him), suggests this coup planning didn't happen in a vacuum. The added fact that the plan didn't appear to leak to the MoD (until it was basically underway) also suggests that these Russian commanders were accepting of a coup attempt if not outright supportive of the efforts. They just needed assurances they would be on the winning side before committing.

Prigozhin probably needed to infiltrate a few hundred soldiers into Moscow ahead of the coup to disrupt any mobilization efforts. But that would have been hard to hide.
Not a Bot
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Rossticus
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" What were the prerequisites for the March for Justice?
- PMC Wagner carries out tasks around the world. It was meant to stop existing on 1 July 2023. "Employees" all refused to sign the contract with MoD, only 1-2% decided to join the Russian army.

- The original plan was to go to Rostov on 30 July and transfer all vehicles to MoD, which were ready for transport.

- Despite any aggression, Wagner suffered a missile attack, followed by helicopter attack. Around 30 PMC Wagner fighters died. This triggered an immediate decision to move out early and respond militarily.

- Throughout the 24-hour march, one column went to Moscow, another to Rostov. They made 780 km of progress in one day. They regret being forced to attack the army aircraft but the bombs were dropped which caused the response. During the march, all military objects on the way were blocked and disarmed. None of the military have died on the ground.

- The objective was to not allow destruction of Wagner and take to responsiblity those who with their unprofessional actions made a huge number of mistakes during the SMO. All the military met along the way supported this.

- Wagner stopped when the advanced storm unit deployed artillery, conducted reconnaissance and realised a lot of blood will be shed in an upcoming battle. They decided that demonstration of the protest was enough, and turned around.

- Factors that made Wagner turn around: first, they didn't want to shed Russian blood. Secondly, they wanted to demonstrate their portest, not overtake the authority in Russia.

- Lukashenko offered to find solutions for further legal operation of Wagner legally. Columns turned aroound and went back to field camps.

- The march showed many things demonstrated before. Serious secruity concerns around the country. All military bases and airfields were blocked.

- If actions on 24 Feb 2022 were done by forces as trained as Wagner, the special operation could have ended in 1 day. This shows the level of organisation that the Russian army should be following."
Rossticus
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74OA
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AG
Here's another excellent review of the factors behind the Wagner rebellion. Well worth reading.

"It is worth emphasizing that on Saturday the threat to him (Putin) personally and to his regime was real. Both the risk and the humiliation were incomparably greater than anything that could happen in Ukraine. Compared to power in Russia, land in Ukraine is unimportant. After what we have just seen, no one should be arguing that Putin might be backed into a corner in Ukraine and take some terrible decision. He cannot be backed into a corner in Ukraine. He can only be backed into a corner in Russia. And now we know what he does when that happens: record a speech and run away."

10 LESSONS
Touchless
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AG
Pretty crazy video of a humvee (not sure it's actually a humvee though) hitting a mine and the immediate aftermath of soldiers on the ground. It is a Uke vehicle though.

Insane Unseen Inside POV when Humvee Hits Mine - Credit to Sean Odinson on YT
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